About the Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre
The Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre is a vibrant, values-led research community dedicated to advancing the wellbeing, agency, and economic futures of First Nations and culturally diverse peoples across Australia and globally. At the Centre’s heart is a commitment to social justice, equity and inclusion, ensuring diverse knowledge, experiences and ways of being are listened to and valued. We align our efforts both with national priorities – such as the Closing the Gap targets – and the global imperatives articulated in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Our Centre is Australia’s only research centre working at the intersection of Indigenous and transcultural inquiry.
The Centre is led by Co-Directors Professor Maria Raciti and Professor Catherine Manathunga. Our research is organised around three interconnected themes:
- Knowledge Systems (Led by Dr Raj Yadav), which explores plural knowledges shaping lived experience, innovation, and cultural continuity.
- Cultural Practices (Led by Dr Rachael Dwyer), which investigates creative expression, language, meaning-making, and identity in transcultural contexts.
- Community Futures (Led by Dr Aaron Tham), which focuses on policy, enterprise, health, and sustainable development within and across communities.
2025: Impact and growth
This year marked the ITRC’s first full year of operation as a formally established university research centre, building on the momentum of our February 2024 launch. Where 2024 was a year of transition, 2025 has been a year of consolidation and growth, deepening our research culture, expanding our membership, and translating our founding vision into measurable impact.
The Centre’s performance this year reflects a shift toward depth and diversification. ITRC members secured $628,000 in new external funding across 11 awarded projects, a broader base of funded work than the previous year, while HERDC-reportable income grew to $1.3 million, an increase of over 40 percent. Our researchers produced 126 peer-reviewed publications, with 71.3 percent appearing in Q1-ranked journals, a marked improvement in scholarly quality and international standing on the year before.
Our research training pipeline also strengthened in 2025. ITRC members supervised 71 HDR students and achieved 11 HDR completions this year, alongside welcoming new Centre members and candidates working across education, health, climate, and creative practice. ITRC Day 2025 brought members, HDR candidates and collaborators together to strengthen cross-theme collaboration and reaffirm our shared, relational approach to research.
Highlights
- In May, Centre Co-Director Professor Catherine Manathunga undertook a fellowship at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) with Professor Shireen Motala and her postdoctoral fellows. Building on Professor Motala’s 2024 Connect Fellowship at UniSC, the visit further strengthened the Centre’s ongoing research partnerships with UJ and other South African universities.
- From October to December, Professor Manathunga also undertook an Institute of Advanced Studies Fellowship at Durham University in England, where she worked on a collaborative project focused on surfacing knowledge produced by doctoral research in UK universities from 1650 to the present.
- The Centre hosted a mix of seminars, masterclasses, yarning sessions and knowledge exchange opportunities with international scholars, Elders, HDR students, and Centre members.
Making a difference: Our research in action
Growing resilience to extreme heat: Community gardening as climate adaptation
Extreme heat driven by climate change is a growing health risk in Australia. Women are disproportionately affected due to gendered social, cultural and economic disadvantages, and migrant women from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds face heightened risk. However, their experiences of – and ways of adapting to – extreme heat are not well understood, which is a barrier to developing inclusive strategies for responding to climate change.
Research led by ITRC member Dr Vinathe Sharma-Brymer has sought to address this gap by examining gardening practices as a strategy to mitigate extreme heat. Focusing on the experiences of six women from transcultural Asian backgrounds living across Australia, the project used interviews and photographs to capture the impacts of extreme heat, and the strategies used to mitigate these impacts on the women’s gardens, families and communities.
The research found that extreme heat damaged gardens, destroyed produce and affected the women’s physical and psychological health and wellbeing. Despite these challenges, the women were able to find joy and agency by adapting their gardening practices: for example, by drawing on traditional knowledges from their home cultures to cultivate more heat-tolerant species, or by exploring Australian bush tucker.
The women described satisfaction in contributing to their communities through sharing multicultural food, fresh produce and seeds, which enhanced social connectedness. They viewed edible gardening as healing for people and the planet. While responses to heat stress have traditionally focused on conventional health services, these findings highlight the important role that nature-based solutions can play in supporting health and wellbeing. They also demonstrate the value of community-led adaptation strategies that help people respond to environmental and social change in their local contexts. The findings have been shared in Australia and overseas through a range of channels, including conferences, a webinar, community radio and several publications.
Transforming national policy to improve equity in higher education
Despite decades of policy, Indigenous students and students from regional or low-socioeconomic backgrounds remain underrepresented in Australian higher education, and those who do attend university are less likely to complete their studies. While there is growing awareness of university as an option, policy and practice have been limited by a lack of evidence about how educational decisions are made. As a result, outreach initiatives and funding models often don’t align with students’ lived experiences or needs, limiting their effectiveness and entrenching equity gaps.
Since 2001, ITRC Co-Director Professor Maria Raciti has led a research program to address this problem through applied, policy-engaged research focused on student experience, career decision-making and participation in higher education. Her work centres Indigenous, regional and low-SES students’ lived experiences to examine how early decision-making and relational factors such as perceived risk, belonging and place shape engagement with higher education.
This program of work has led to national policy impact, notably through Professor Raciti’s contribution to the Australian Government’s 2019 National Regional, Rural and Remote Education Strategy (the Napthine Review) and the Australian Universities Accord. In both instances, Professor Raciti’s work has directly informed policy recommendations and outcomes, helping to shape reforms designed to improve educational outcomes for Australians outside major cities, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Professor Raciti’s work has also informed institutional practice across the higher education sector. Her research on perceived risk and academic place making has been shared nationally through the research centres (such as the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education), and industry and practitioner forums designed to inform widening participation and Indigenous student engagement practice. These outputs have been used by at least five universities to enrich their outreach programs, and by equity practitioners to inform the redesign of student support, engagement and participation strategies, particularly for Indigenous and regional cohorts.
Looking ahead: 2026 and beyond
Building on a strong year of growth and diversification, in 2026 the Centre will continue to work towards the goals and targets set out in the ITRC Research Plan 2025–2027.
Priorities include shaping a more targeted co-funding model going forward, and investing in our people and capability by strengthening members’ capacity to prepare competitive grant applications, supporting Theme Leader professional development, resourcing respectful and sustained Elder engagement in research and sustaining the internal events and meetings that underpin the Centre’s collaborative culture.
We will continue to grow our research community through a calendar of seminars and events, including an international seminar series, symposia, and community-facing gatherings that reflect the Centre’s relational way of working.
The Centre will also continue to evidence its contribution against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, National Closing the Gap targets, and United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples articles, reinforcing the ITRC’s position as a Centre whose work is grounded in, and answerable to, community priorities.